“Perhaps in laying down my functions,” said M. Casimir-Perier, “I shall have marked out a path of duty to those who are solicitous for the dignity, power and good name of France in the world.”
We may be permitted to hope that the lesson is wider than France and more lasting than the French republic. It is well that not only France but all other countries with “popular institutions” should learn that if they wish to command the services of men of honor they must accord them honorable treatment; the rule now is for the party to which they belong to give them a half-hearted support while suffering all other parties to slander and insult them. The action of the president of the French republic in these disgusting circumstances is exceptional and unusual only in respect of his courage in expressly resenting his wrong. Everywhere the unreasonable complaint is heard that good men will not “go into politics;” everywhere the ignorant and malignant masses and their no less malignant and hardly less ignorant leaders and spokesmen, having sown the wind of reasonless obstruction and partisan vilification, are reaping the whirlwind of misrule. So far as concerns the public service, gentlemen are mostly on a strike against introduction of the mud-machine. This high-minded political workman, Casimir-Perier, never showed to so noble advantage as in gathering up his tools and walking out.
It may be, and a thousand times has been, urged that abstention from activity in public affairs by men of brains and character leaves the business of government in the hands of the incapable and the vicious. In whose hands, pray, in a republic, does it logically belong? What does the theory of “representative government” affirm? What is the lesson of every netherward extension of the suffrage? What do we mean by permitting it to “broaden slowly down” to lower and lower intelligences and moralities?—what but that stupidity and vice, equally with virtue and wisdom, are entitled to a voice in political affairs?
A person that is fit to vote is fit to be voted for. He who is competent for the high and difficult function of choosing an officer of the state is competent to serve the state as an officer. To deny him the right is illogical and unjust. Participation in government can not be at the same time a privilege and a duty, and he who claims it as a privilege must not speak of another’s renunciation (whereby himself is more highly privileged) as “shirking.” With every retirement from politics increased power passes to those who remain. Shall they protest? Who else is to protest? The complaint of “incivism” would be more reasonable if there were some one by whom it could reasonably be made.
The public officials of this favored country, Heaven be thanked, are infrequently slandered: they are, as a rule, so bad that calumniation is a compliment. Our best men, with here and there an exception, have been driven out of public life, or made afraid to enter it. Even our spasmodic efforts at reform fail ludicrously for lack of leaders unaffiliated with “the thing to be reformed.” Unless attracted by the salary, why should a gentleman “aspire” to the presidency of the United States? During his canvass (and he is expected to “run,” not merely to “stand”) he will have from his own party a support that should make him blush, and from all the others an opposition that will stick at nothing to accomplish his satisfactory defamation. After his election his partition and allotment of the loaves and fishes will estrange an important and thenceforth implacable faction of his following without appeasing the animosity of any one else. At the finish of his term the utmost that he can expect in the way of reward not expressible in terms of the national currency is that not much more than one-half of his countrymen will believe him a scoundrel to the end of their days.
VII
The trend of political thought and action in all civilized countries toward absolute Socialism is so conspicuous a phenomenon that it not only impresses that rare and execrated intelligence, the impartial observer, “the looker-on at the game,” but is seen with greater or less distinctness by the innumerable company of players. A political faith is a kind of mental disability; the patient dimly discerns some of the more salient of the “opposing facts,” but those grateful to his disorder loom large indeed. The proposition that the established order of things is in peril, has, therefore, both a stammering and a stentorian assent and needs no proof. Whether that is for better or for worse is not to be answered in an epigram, nor in a paragraph, but from the viewpoint of the looker-on with no more than an observer’s interest in the matter, little is seen to encourage the optimist—little even of the little that he requires.
Down to date the world never has had good government. For forms of government fools have contested from the dawn of history, but no form has given good and wise administration. Government is like medicine; those who administer it are, as a rule, wiser than those to whom it is administered, though not much. In point of conscience there is little to choose between them.
There are two forms of real government; absolute Monarchy and absolute Democracy; all others are bastard forms attesting the failure of these, and themselves doomed to fail. The cause of failure lies in the essential folly and badness of human nature. From a stupid and selfish people there is no certainty of getting a wise and conscientious sovereign. Even when that miracle has been wrought, good government has not resulted, for the sovereign, however absolute in theory, however good and wise in fact, is compelled to work through shallow and selfish officials. Democracy suffers the same disability, with the added disadvantage of a sovereign that is never wise and never just.
As to limited Monarchies and constitutional Democracies, they are similarly and equally futile. Divided authority is divided responsibility. Restraint of the power to do evil is restraint of the power to do good. Under the “one-man power” (a name, by the way, that our good forefathers singularly chose to give to the rule of the British ministry and parliament) it is at least known who is to blame for sins of administration, and to whom is due the credit for what is creditable. The autocrat can not hide behind his own back.